Zoom AI Companion Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

Zoom AI Companion is Zoom’s integrated AI assistant, announced on September 5, 2023, for meeting and workplace tasks. Its initial tools included meeting summaries, in-meeting questions, recording highlights, Team Chat assistance, Whiteboard ideation, and Mail drafting. Zoom uses a federated model strategy combining its own models with third-party systems from Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, while saying customer communications are not used to train those models. The product’s identity changed on June 24, 2026: the AI Companion name was retired, its core functions were folded into Zoom Workplace under functional labels, and ZoomMate became the newer agentic product built on Custom AI Companion. ZoomMate starts at $20 per user monthly, or $16.67 annually, with 2,200 credits per user each month. The original AI Companion therefore remains relevant as a feature history, not a current standalone offer.

Zoom AI Companion’s core value is turning meetings and conversations into follow-up work inside Zoom Workplace. During a meeting, it can answer in-meeting questions, transcribe discussion, produce a summary and capture notes through My Notes, including for supported third-party meetings and in-person conversations. Afterward, users can ask questions across Zoom content, draft messages or documents, create custom meeting-summary formats, and send results to connected services such as Salesforce, Jira, Google Drive and OneDrive. A practical workflow is straightforward: enable My Notes before a call, review the generated decisions and action items, then use ZoomMate to draft a status update, schedule follow-ups, update a record or create a deliverable. ZoomMate also supports custom agents, scheduled workflows and agentic search. The older AI Companion name was retired, but these functions remain under their specific feature names inside Zoom Workplace.

Zoom’s technology is federated rather than tied to one named model. The company combines its own large language models with models from OpenAI and Anthropic, and earlier AI Companion material also named Meta’s Llama 2. Zoom says customer audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, and similar communications content are not used to train Zoom’s or third-party models. In June 2026, Zoom retired the AI Companion branding: meeting summaries, transcription, and chat compose moved into Zoom Workplace under functional names, while ZoomMate became the agentic product built on Custom AI Companion. ZoomMate adds agentic search, connected-app workflows, custom agents, and document or slide generation. Its paid plan costs $20 per user monthly, or $16.67 annually, and includes 2,200 credits. Features announced for later 2026 should not be confused with those available now.

Zoom’s free Basic tier is usable for a trial, but its quotas make the limits clear: three hosted meeting summaries monthly, three in-meeting question sessions, three My Notes uses, 20 AI queries, agentic search across 10 files and three meetings, and 10 Zoom-only workflow runs. Meetings remain capped at 40 minutes for 100 participants. Paid ZoomMate costs $20 per user monthly or $16.67 annually and includes 2,200 AI credits per user each month, unlimited AI note-taking, custom meeting-summary templates, connected-app workflows, agents, deep research, and the AI Productivity Suite. Credits are consumed by AI actions and agentic capabilities, creating the main cost pressure for heavy users. Core AI features remain included with eligible paid Zoom Workplace plans, while the former standalone AI Companion branding has been retired.

Zoom AI Companion was rebranded on June 24, 2026, with its former features folded into functional labels inside Zoom Workplace, while ZoomMate became the paid agentic successor. That creates a naming problem for buyers comparing it with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google Workspace Gemini, and Slack AI, each of which remains a clearer product identity. ZoomMate Basic is limited to three hosted meeting summaries, three My Notes uses, 20 AI queries, 10 workflow runs, and 10 indexed files, while the paid plan costs $20 per user monthly or $16.67 annually and includes 2,200 credits. Zoom also says customer communications are not used to train its models, though connected content is processed to provide features. ZoomMate is best suited to Zoom Workplace teams that want meeting context turned into follow-up tasks, documents, and workflows without changing collaboration platforms.